In the Beercellar’s Blog’s now classic and most famous post About Time I Said Something About Harold Klemp… I talked a lot about Truth and a little about the secrets of Truth (which I felt were very untruthful).   Since that time, more surfing the web has been done, and more extremely entertaining things have been unearthed relating to the ECK Master, Harold Klemp.  The video on Singing the HU linked at the top here is a pretty amazing gem.  I love how he attempts to help the strangers get relaxed…and then works in this reference to a special spiritual skill he has that they don’t.  He has a way for them to get it too…but they won’t feel it tonight, of course, Harold Klemp would be very surprised if you did.  The guy is a dead ringer for a George W. Bush impersonator in his cadence, his smirk, his frequent look of total freak out fear (like “what the hell am I supposed to say next?”), his vocabulary, and even kind of in his appearance.  Amazing shit.  I love how he can barely believe he’s singing HU, how he keeps looking around and swinging around in his chair…what a genius.

In one of my searches long ago (I’m not even sure I was searching using Google, the search engine back when I found this!) I discovered that there are a pretty fair number of chat boards with discussions about the ol’ Klempster.  Some pretty fascinating stuff.  Things like, get this, lots of people really believe that this guy is some sort of divinity.  Some people spent their lives (and some still might be) following his “teachings”…and some have ended up feeling let down, betrayed, confused, angry, and hurt by their own stupidity.  To compensate for this, some of them started picking apart little details of the so-called Eckankar “teachings”–and particularly Sri Harold Klemp’s peculiarities– and pointing out to each other (I guess maybe these are new fangled “cyber space”–where what you are seeing exists RIGHT NOW!!–Eckist recovery groups) how it just couldn’t be true.

I never knew that Harold was sick because he was taking on the pain and suffering of all his followers until I spent some of my own time reading the discussion chat forums.  One that is particularly good is linked here:  “The Definitive Harold Klemp Chat”  Some of this stuff is really truly wonderful.  It proves how incredible the internet can be, and I think, shows what great potential  the internet or “web” (as some insiders call it) has to help spread ideas and community in a new way that the world before this time had never considered.  A lot of potential in this medium, I feel pretty confident in that proclamation.  I think the internet is here to stay…but anyway, back to Harold Klemp, the great ECK cultmaster.

Seriously, take a look at the Quirks and Foibles thread. Click Right Here to Be Transported.  More Classic than this blog’s own most famous Post.  Some of it I simply must reprint here, though.  Like this passage:

You know, there have been times & places where I’ve noticed sort
of “funny” things about computers…I’m not a “scientific” person,
but I think it’s possible that electromagnetic radiation can
certainly affect people. My own personal theory (one of them) is
that computers can somehow amplify & transmit the “vibes” of their
environment, and users. Now…this didn’t happen to me on *all*
computers over the years, just some. But…when you’re working on
them, you have to deal with it. So…I dealt with it. I felt I sort
of “adjusted” myself, okay, maybe in some way “blocked” things coming
through that I felt…so I wondered, what was the big problem with
Klemp? Couldn’t he “balance” himself or something? Didn’t make
sense, you know. Just like <ggg> the divorce thing. Didn’t make
sense. Why couldn’t “the master” balance his wife so she could deal
with him, you know? I *had* read quite clearly in the “teachings”
that the M/LEM balanced people.

Please note that in the above passage from the Greatest Klemp Chat Discussion Forum Board Thread Ever, when the poster mentions their theory, it needs to be clarified that this theory, which they are nearly ready to tell you, if you keep reading, is only ONE of their theories.  VERY VERY VERY important to stress that you should not, under any circumstance, assume or believe that the theory that is about to be revealed is the sole, single, or only theory that the Poster (‘Poster’ is internet slang for the person who is writing the ‘Post’, which is the passage of text you are reading in cyberspace right now).   This Poster “Sharon” (who also needs to get back to doing laundry) (which is a detail she reveals just before she–and I can only guess–leaps off the couch and heads towards the clothes washer), wants to make sure that we all know she has more theories.

I think the deal is that if Sharon (whose email address we can find out is a rather sultry ‘bright tigress’ @ something.com—about 87% of email addresses end with .com) just laid all her theories on us at once, we’d fucking die or something.  Probably our heads would explode I bet.  And we might end up looking like this Iraqi:

Dead person in Fallujah http://thewe.cc/weplanet/news/americas/us/war_crimes_fallujah.html#this_is_real

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I couldn’t find that exact commercial, but I found this one, which also makes me want to vomit into a glass and then force Anderson Cooper to drink it.

Art...it is a Saison.

It is frustrating that people seem unable to recognize simple patterns quickly.  I think that it probably isn’t lack of recognition, but some sort of repression.  The pattern then becomes one of reacting with uncertainty repeatedly when confronted with a recurring situation.  I can recognize this pattern.  So why can’t people realize that they ask me to make the same decision for them many times a year?  It is a large amount of energy that is going to waste.  I want to function efficiently, but other people’s inefficiency is a major drag on my own.  Frustrating, to say the least.  It is too bad that people aren’t willing to accept responsibility for their own actions.  They crave “orders from above.” They feel that this justifies their actions and allows them to be “not friendly” with other people.  Or it could be that they are hoping that I will volunteer to take on the task that they’d rather avoid.  No need to do something that would upset somebody who wants something from you, right?  Somebody else can do that.  Not me.

So, what to do?  Stay up late at night watching SyFy movies about giant insects?  Drink more beer?  Exercise more and eat less meat? Do more drugs?  Do less drugs? Explore formerly unexplored sexual perversions?  Learn carpentry skills?  Conserve energy?  Go for a drive in the Berkshires?  Convince a Belgian to let you brew beer in their brewery?  Damn it, what the hell to do?

I’m just not sure I care.  And fuck QuiBids!

This is tough. My dad used to get tickets to all the Nebraska State Fair shows, and we’d all go to most of them. The earliest ones were probably either Air Supply (I know that I fell asleep during this one) or Crystal Gayle. I’m going with Crystal Gayle as I was totally fascinated by her amazingly long hair (it went past her butt!) and equally perplexed and captivated by the thought of somebody who was going to make her “brownies blue.”  The thought of making blue brownies seemed absolutely amazing to me.

I guess I’m doing both permeations of the challenge.  Why Not?  Both have some real weaknesses as far as I’m concerned, so I’m going to sludge through them both and have a lotof fucking fun along the way.  Here are the rules for “30 Day”:

day 01 – your favorite song
day 02 – your least favorite song
day 03 – a song that makes you happy
day 04 – a song that makes you sad
day 05 – a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 – a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 – a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 – a song that you know all the words to
day 09 – a song that you can dance to
day 10 – a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 – a song from your favorite band
day 12 – a song from a band you hate
day 13 – a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 – a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 – a song that describes you
day 16 – a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 – a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 – a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 – a song from your favorite album
day 20 – a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 – a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 – a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 – a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 – a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 – a song that makes you laugh
day 26 – a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 – a song that you wish you could play
day 28 – a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 – a song from your childhood
day 30 – your favorite song at this time last year

So, Day 1, my favorite song?  I don’t have one on anything close to a permanent basis, but lately, over the past few months, I’d say it is this one, from Avi Buffalo, What’s In It For?  The video is a helluva lot of fun too…I don’t know about anybody else, but this song feels happy and positive to me…not selfish.

U2, Bullet the Blue Sky, from the album “Joshua Tree” (live version from more than 20 years later appears above).

This was rather tough for me to figure out for a couple of reasons.   The first is that I would have been pretty young when I first started requesting specific stuff, and of course wouldn’t have had the money to “buy myself” in most cases.  I know I bugged and bugged my parents at Richman Gordman on numerous occaisons to buy me cassettes (these were safer property for a lil’ un, even though I had a record player) of Lionel Richie and Hall and Oates.

The Richman Gordman playground (not actually pictured, but this is a very similar elephant). Apparently I wasn't the only kid weirded out by all of this

Very similiar to the one I had as a youngster in the early 80s. It could play 45 or 33 and it had a built in adapter for the 45s.

However, I can place a few albums that I definitely forwent my lawn mowing money for ($15, which wasn’t bad in the late 1980s, when albums were around $7).  I could just ask my dad to “order” them when he ordered his 45s for his jukeboxes.  U2 Joshua Tree and John Mellecamp’s Lonesome Jubilee were two.  I think I had Joshua Tree first, and Bullet the Blue Sky sticks out to me.   You really can’t ignore that opener.  That’s an incredible classic, sort of timeless to me…but Bullet the Blue Sky did something else to me…the same sort of thing that Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones did (which I knew mostly as the theme song to the TV series “Tour of Duty”, which also debuted in 1987).  I don’t know exactly what the connection was…some sort of violent oppressive hopelessness maybe…some fantasy of dying a tragic death in battle, not because I wanted to defend America, but more because I didn’t think there was anything really worth living for, and it would be more glorious to go out in a bang.  Seemed cool from what I could tell, and it made the other people who knew extra crazy if it was dramatic.  Something like that.  It was the 1980s, Reagan had been around for 7 years at this point, I’d already been told for years that communists were out to get us at all costs…but now a little bit of something else was creeping into my awareness…something sinister about America.  Outisde it’s America.  And it was scarier than the Soviet Union to me.

Below is the quick gist, if you don’t already know.  This is a variation on something to which many facebook users have taken a shine.  I might sub in some of the original 30 Day Song Challenge list, which is generally much less interesting…who knows.  Since Lala sold out to itunes and I lost the life soundtrack I had been assembling on this site, I’m building this on Mog, which I use even more frequently than I did Lala…the functionality is different in many ways.  Neither was perfect, but both plenty fun and have given me access to lots of music.  Here’s the list and “rules” reprinted from the page on facebook:

Join up, post a link to a song from each day that satisfies the topic for that day. Then go create your own challenge!

RULES:
day 1: a song from the first album you remember buying yourself

day 2: a song by the artist you saw at your first live concert

day 3: your favorite album cover, a song from that record

day 4: a song you love on an album with a cover you don’t like

day 5: a favorite first song, side one

day 6: a favorite first song, side two

day 7: a song that reminds you of your first love

day 8: a song that reminds you of your first heartbreak

day 9: a song that reminds you of high school

day 10: a song from the best mixtape you ever received

day 11: a song you put on while you’re cleaning house, or cooking

day 12: a song that reminds of of a really romantic evening

day 13: a song that makes you drive faster

day 14: a song that makes you turn off the radio

day 15: the last song you heard in public

day 16: the opening theme song of your (imaginary) radio show

day 17: a morning song

day 18: an evening song

day 19: a midnight song

day 20: a song to make plants grow

day 21: a song to make plants die

day 22: a song you’d live in for a week if it were a place you could take a vacation

day 23: a song that makes you think, hard

day 24: your favorite road trip song

day 25: a song that reminds you of your family of origin

day 26: a song that reminds you of your family of choice

day 27: the theme song from your action movie

day 28: the theme song from your romantic comedy

day 29: the theme song from your art film

day 30: the song you think of, sing, quote, recall most often

day 31: make your own challenge today!

I'm so busy giving you news I hardly had time to pose in the "street" for this shot

I wanted to get some news tonight. I heard that there were radiation concerns in Japan. I heard that a big international consulting firm was planning where to move its people if an evacuation of Tokyo was necessary. I wondered what was going to happen with beer there if the water was radiated. How serious is that threat? Would we ever know? What the fuck is nuclear power anyway? I thought it was something to do with splitting cells to create energy. Pretty amazing thing us humans have figured out. Only problem is that the waste is some of the most toxic stuff humans have ever created and could wipe out thousands and millions of us. Pretty amazing thing us humans have figured out. “No pollution” (except radioactive waste) is produced to create electricity! Yes! Oh, but if something ever happens around the plant, massive areas of the planet could be massively altered and life mutated to the point of death. That is efficiency, isn’t it? Genius…are you ready for that great atomic power? Of course! But, this was supposed to be about the uncontrolled feeling of disturb that I got from watching Anderson Cooper tonight. Who cares about the plight of humanity, let’s talk TV…

And before we do that, what sort of logic dictates that Anthony Bourdain No Reservations on Cambodia is followed by that fucking idiotic Man vs Food? Really disgusting show, that one. Just goes to show you that when one person tries to do something to uplift and connect humanity, there is a fat dumb ass waiting around the corner to try to make everybody stupider. “Look I’m going to eat a hamburger so big that it took 3 cows to make it!” Aren’t we humans great!!!

So, Anderson “fucking” Cooper, right? Well, just looking at his serious face and manequin hair bother me. He’s so damn serious and knows so damn much about every fucking thing going on in the world that he can’t help but be serious, right? Damn Adnerson Cooper! You can really tell it straight and honest. Thanks Adnerson, how else would I get by without you? It is especially cute when you take a time out from the serious shit you are giving yourself to us for the sake of knowledge to flirt with the chick that comes on to give less important updates (like the fact that the iPad 2 seems to be delayed because of this little thing in Japan called a fucking DISASTER!!!). Damn, I mean thousands dead is rough, but I gave to the Red Cross…can’t they at least keep the new iPad’s flowing? Crap, this really is bad.

The thing that repulses me is that I can’t get news off the TV. I get news SHOWS, with stars names heading them up. Fuck Adnerson Cooper.

You might know us as the guys (though 50% of our crazy enormous company is women) who have all those crazy obscure beers you’ve never heard of.  We’re the guys you image-gatherers for “publications” wrote to about getting label graphics for your “What’s New” side-bar, and we never wrote back.  We’re the guys who imported that 3 year old bottle of Dutch lager you just found on the back shelf of the local beer mega store.  We’re the guys you sent samples to and didn’t hear from for 4 months.  We are the people who import expensive beer and then complain that you charge too much money for it.  We may have told you that the beer you drink or buy or sell or import or brew sucks.  We might have told you to piss off or that your understanding of the 3-tier system is so flawed as to be laughable.  You may have complained about not having Cantillon and we seemed unconcerned.  We are that tall dude at the other table who heard you talking about beer and interrupted to make sure you’d tried what we were drinking, because it was so obviously better.  We are the people who think Socialism and Entrepreneurship go hand in hand.  We don’t eat meat or really like food all that much.  We understand the use of hyperbole.   We might lecture you about what you drink, but more likely about how you think.  We probably think you don’t think enough.  Not as much as we do, at least.  Not about all this stuff related to every aspect of the beer you drink.  We like things that aren’t popular, but think the world would be better if they were popular.  We think Jimi Hendrix had no soul.   We don’t understand how our phones work and sometimes forget to charge them.  We are people who think not all lies are deceitful.

You might wonder why we didn’t return your call or email.  Or wonder why we act so strangely about how you do your business.   Or why we don’t just give you a two syllable answer.   Its because we are the guys who wrote Henry Pym the Pygmy Pyromaniac in 7th Grade.

Its because we do what we do like nobody else.